


i could be your vice (if it's worth my while)

by ollyalexander



Category: The Half Bad Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Developing Friendships, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sexual Tension, Unwritten Scenes, annalise/nathan mentions, takes place during half bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 07:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17762162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ollyalexander/pseuds/ollyalexander
Summary: "Just a few slit throats are enough to send a message."[Gabriel falls in love.]





	i could be your vice (if it's worth my while)

**Author's Note:**

> i first read half bad a while ago but i basically make a tradition of rereading it every year, if u want an explanation as to why this is so late. its good shit every time
> 
> title is from holy by former vandal

 

The question Nathan pops is not the one Gabriel would prefer, but it’s definitely one that’s been on his mind. _Both_ of their minds, when he thinks about it.

He’s bumming one of Gabriel’s cigarettes when he asks, “are you afraid of me?”

That gives him pause. Not because he is, but because Nathan wouldn’t believe him if he told him the truth. He leans back on the railing idly, running his thumb along his bottom lip as he watches the tip of the cigarette light up like a meteoroid against Nathan’s dark skin.

“Not afraid, necessarily,” Gabriel says, sticking his fingers between the rails. They freeze his fingertips, but the rest of him feels warm. It’s a welcome distraction. “Intimidated, sure. You can be very—awe-worthy.”

Nathan’s mouth curls into a self-satisfied little smile—one that he promptly tries to hide. “I haven’t heard that one before,” he says, and sucks, hard, on the cigarette, to the point where Gabriel wonders how much space he has in his chest. He leans forward and plucks it out of his fingers, but he tenses. It’s a bad idea. He can see the proverbial claws start to shift out of Nathan’s hands.

But he’s not afraid, and he’s making a point. It’s only been three days—he’s done his best to make conversation, but Nathan doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t like words, but sometimes he’ll get this funny look on his face when Gabriel’s going off about rock-climbing or France and Gabriel’s filled with the desire to wipe it off his face, to get him to at least make some sort of _retort_. But he’s always quiet. Always. Always asking about Mercury.

Fucking Mercury. His fingers wrap around the cig almost without his meaning to but he doesn’t take a swig. He most certainly could take him to her if he wanted to—she may have a problem with it, but ultimately, Mercury’s fascinated with him. The same way everyone is, even Gabriel. In the end, she’d probably be thankful for more time with him.

But he’s not at the point where he can disobey a direct order—that being to keep Nathan here, to make sure he’s safe to bring.

He’s _Marcus’s_ son, after all. It’s so surreal, to know what Nathan is made of. Worse men would make him a zoo exhibit.

Nathan probably sees him falter with the cigarette, but Gabriel doesn’t care. He inhales, and holds his breath—one more second—another—until he feels like he’s made permanent damage to his throat lining. And even then, he doesn’t cough, ashing his cigarette over the balcony.

Nathan smiles him with very little teeth. Gabriel knows his full-mouthed grin is something he uses sparsely, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t look out for it. Even when it’s hidden by his scarf, wrapped around his mouth.

The fact that he still wears his gloves and scarf irks Gabriel, somehow—he’s tried to sneak up on him before, to see him without the extra layers as he sleeps or gets ready in the morning, but he’s always a step ahead of Gabriel. Perhaps he sleeps in them.

But then again, he supposes he doesn’t have much say in the matter of Nathan and his secrets. He’s staring at him through the sepia filter of his sunglasses, after all, and there’s none of the familiar burn of being in the fresh air after being indoors for so long that he used to get when still in his Black Witch form.

It’s ridiculous, with the fact that he’s still a fain in mind, that Mercury had decided him as Nathan’s contact. Gabriel’s pretty sure charisma and being a _fellow young man_ are not character traits Nathan seeks out in friends—he usually settles with what he’s given, Gabriel’s noticed. And if given the choice, he prefers not to make friends at all. Rose would be better as a guide in that aspect, since she knows how to leave people alone.

Gabriel does not. He wears this fact on his sleeve. Mercury’s been using it to her advantage—part of the wait is to see how much she can amp Nathan up, see how much of his father is truly in him, and that can only be established with more contact with Black Witches. He can still sense the subconscious distrust on him, which is certainly not something Mercury will settle for.

Nathan’s hand grips at his, and Gabriel’s confused for a second until Nathan curls his fingers towards himself and takes the cigarette back, ignoring all laws of common courtesy and pressing his mouth wherever he wants.

Gabriel could make a remark, but he doesn’t. He lets Nathan finish his cigarette, tongue jutting out occasionally to flick at his lips or at the bottom of the stick. It’s a rush of colour in an otherwise dark landscape.

“I don’t think you’re scary,” Gabriel decides, finally. Any man— _boy_ —who can manage to look like a lizard while smoking a cigarette will never be particularly frightening to him.

“Me being scary and you being scared of me are two very different things,” Nathan says.

Gabriel smiles. He knows Nathan doesn’t like his smile, but he does it anyway. “Do you want me to be scared of you?” He asks.

Nathan takes an idle drag. “I don’t know,” he decides. This would usually be grounds for shutting down the conversation, but Gabriel wants to push him a bit further.

“There’s this quote from _One Day in the Life_ I’m quite fond of,” Gabriel says. “ _Slitting a few throats had made a difference_ . It was when the zeks started fighting back, rebelling against the informers. _Slitting a few throats had made a difference; just three of them, and you wouldn’t know it was the same camp_.”

He studies Nathan’s face. There’s no particular look of recollection on his face, but he looks vaguely interested, and that’s enough for Gabriel.

“Well?” Nathan asks. He’s finally finished his—their?—cigarette. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

“There was only one way to be free of the camps, wasn’t there?” Gabriel asks. “Rebellion. And not just against the guards, the officers, but against any other oppressive forces. The prisoners had to start somewhere, and the stoolies were local, and they’d already betrayed their own kind. And what does rebellion against fellow man lead to? Fear.”

“They had it coming,” Nathan says stoically. He’s tugging at his gloves now, and Gabriel’s eyes glue to the exposed strip of skin from where he lifts it from his wrist. “The stoolies, I mean. With their throats being cut.”

“They were only looking out for themselves,” Gabriel says softly. The stoolies were the informants in the prison of _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_. “It’s the unfortunate truth. Being scared of someone you’d once thought was your ally is—worse than any other kind of fear.”

Nathan nods, slowly, and then snaps back to attention. Like he hadn’t meant to expose that much of himself to the outside world. Gabriel barely moves.

“That’s why there’s no use for allies,” Nathan says.

Gabriel shakes his head. ‘Then you’re severely underestimating the reason you’re here.”

And he’s not scared of him, particularly. Maybe scared _for_ him would be a better way to phrase what he’s feeling. Nathan sighs, annoyedly, and crosses his arms.

“I don’t like puzzles,” he says. “I’m quite thick, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Gabriel cringes. He hadn’t meant it to sound like that. “You aren’t thick,” he says. “I think you’re quite smart. You’re certainly more street-smart than I am. And, you know, environmentally-smart, all of that shit.”

Nathan narrows his eyes at him.

“It’s true,” Gabriel says. “This isn’t a trick.”

Nathan purses his lips as his face flushes pink, but it doesn’t go fully red—Gabriel wouldn’t put it past him to have some way of stopping his blush. “There’s more important things to be talked about right now,” he says sharply.

Sensing another Mercury breakdown, Gabriel speaks before Nathan can. “You’re right,” he says. “Hey. All I’m saying is—you’re not here just because you’re waiting for Mercury.”

Nathan looks down at his shoes. He’s going to smile, Gabriel can sense it. One of those wide, white-toothed ones.

Except he doesn’t. He asks for another cigarette with that same neutral expression on his face.

 

* * *

 

 

And then they’re sitting side-by-side in the bathroom, covered in blood. Covered in blood like they’ve been turned inside-out. Gabriel can feel his nose shifted out of place and nothing feels real.

“Fuck,” Nathan says quietly. It’s not the first or last time he’s saying it. He runs his hand through his hair and leans back on the tiled wall, and he looks like every dangerous thing Gabriel’s ever seen. Guns and knives and bombs and threats.

“Fucking asshole,” Gabriel mutters. He can barely look at him. “ _Morceau de merde_.”

“You’re a liar,” Nathan says.

“What, you don’t like liars?” Gabriel says viciously. “Lying by omission is still a lie and you’re always in those fucking gloves. And the scarf.”

Nathan sighs. “You don’t understand.”

“Neither do you,” Gabriel says.

And they’re quiet, for a moment longer. Probably just because Gabriel’s trying to work out what parts of him are broken.

Nathan sits up, rubbing at his eyes as he props his combat boots up in front of him. “Let me see.”

“Don’t touch me,” Gabriel says, and yanks his head away. He tongues at his teeth, wondering how to go about this in the least-painful way possible, when Nathan’s grey scarf flops in front of his line of sight. He looks up.

Nathan’s pulling off his gloves, almost subconsciously pushing down his neck to try and hide the tattoo he has there. It reads _B 0.5_. There’s matching ones on some of his fingers.

Gabriel tears his eyes away. He doesn’t want to spare more than a glance at them, because he’s guessing Nathan hates them, the way he stares at them like they’re scars. He looks at other parts at him instead, focuses on his face a bit more clearly now that he doesn’t have to wear his sunglasses. (He still isn’t sure why. But there’s obviously something bad in his eyes, what with what Nathan did to him.)

“There,” Nathan says gruffly, and stretches his fingers unnecessarily. “I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.”

Gabriel taps his head back on the wall again. He might have a concussion—albeit a very mild one. “It’s my Gift,” he says. “I am stuck like… _ow_. In this form. Instead of my real one.”

Nathan looks at him for a moment longer. He feels studied, but Nathan must too. Gabriel’s making an effort to look at every other part of him except his tattoos, and he’s nice to look at—so minimalistic. Dark hair. Tan skin. Pink mouth. Green under-eyes. He could pick out the colours of a rainbow in him if he tried hard enough.

“I told you I don’t want to be scared of you,” Gabriel says softly, “and I still don’t want to be. You can understand how this is difficult, now, right? For what I said yesterday—you’re not just here waiting for Mercury. You don’t have to make people afraid of you. You don’t have to slit any more throats.”

Nathan looks down at him in badly-disguised shame. He gnaws on his lip like it’s a meal, and he finally stands up, extending a hand.

“Let’s go bandage you up,” Nathan says.

 

* * *

 

 

They’ve been in Mercury’s _château_ for three days, now. Nothing has changed, but nothing seems to remain the same. Nathan’s stopped complaining about not seeing Mercury, for one, but now that the promise of his Giving rests over his head, he’s testy, quiet. Not to the point where he’s beating the shit out of Gabriel for seemingly no reason, but it’s still irritating.

They’re in the forest, watching animals caper around their legs. They may as well be part of the foliage whenever they stop hiking to take a break, whispering and watching.

He forgives Nathan, really. The things he’s done to both Black and White Witches—the same day he found out Rose was a White Witch, he saw her snooping outside the passageway to Mercury’s home and held a knife to her throat. Thought she was a spy. With that in mind, it’s ironic, really, that he could hold a grudge against what Nathan did to him when it’s just part of their nature.

“Why did you want to try being a fain?” Nathan asks suddenly.

Gabriel stops walking so he can pull a bottle of water out of his knapsack. “Beats me,” he says honestly. “I wanted to know if anything was different.”

“Was it?” He asks.

“I don’t know if I could tell you,” Gabriel responds. “I feel like I’ve forgotten how—being a Witch feels. Like, there’s all these little things that differentiate you from a fain, more than just the Gift, but then when you no longer have them—all you feel is their absence. Not what they were, exactly.”

“That sounds terrible,” Nathan says, and Gabriel nods because he doesn’t know what else to do. And it is. For all of his muck about not being smart, Nathan can put things into words beautifully.

“The only thing I have been able to identify is being outside,” Gabriel says. “And that’s just because it used to be so strong for me. You told me you have it too, so you could probably put it into words better than I could, but it’s just… the burn. I can’t feel it anymore, when I go back outdoors after being inside for a while. I like the world. I like the world a lot.”

“So do I,” Nathan says. “Well—most of it. Not so much the people.”

“People are my favourite part,” Gabriel says. And a small part of him says, _only one person specifically_. “But, no matter. I don’t get to enjoy those things anymore. I’m not a Witch.”

“What?” Nathan says, affronted. “You’re a Witch. Of course you’re a Witch. Fuck off.”

“Don’t try and make me—”

“I’m not trying to make you _feel better_ , Gabriel, I’m just trying to get you to stop brooding. I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“How do you like seeing me, then?” He asks, and holds Nathan’s eye for a bit longer than is appropriate. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he likes pushing him to his limits sometimes, seeing how far he can take him before he makes some sort of comment. “I’m sorry you don’t like the truth, but that’s what it is. I’m not a Witch—”

“Maybe your body isn’t,” Nathan says finally, stepping closer to him, “but your brain is. Your heart is, as fucking cheesy as that sounds. The same way Rose is a White Witch but says she has the heart of a Black Witch—you’re a fain with the heart of a Black Witch. And I promise I’ll help you. Get yourself back, I mean.”

For a moment, he’s starstruck. Nathan’s eyes are dark, and there seems to be gaps in the brown colour like there’s another shade missing. The space between his nose and mouth is flecked with water from where he must have been drinking, and his fingers twist around each other, cuticles picked and skin scratched. He’s made of so many bruises, so many stings, that thinking about him aches.

And Gabriel thinks about him. He thinks about him a lot.

“That means a lot,” he says—breathes it, because Nathan is too close and he’s afraid that if he speaks louder he’ll scare him away, like a wild animal. But Nathan doesn’t startle; his eyes lift to Gabriel’s, and then to his hair, his nose, his lips, his neck.

Something is wrong. Something is off. He doesn’t feel like this, ever, except when he’s—and his brain goes, _oh, fuck_ , and he steps away before he does something rash, like kiss him or touch him or even worse: thank him.

 

* * *

 

He hasn’t been nervous around Nathan for a long time. Not since he picked him up from the airport, tried to make him comfortable in the apartment even though it was like trying to calm a bull with a red blanket. But he and Rose go out to Geneva late one night—as friends instead of Witches—and he finds a knife in a hunters’ shop, and had to pay a hefty sum to buy it from the display because it was apparently only for decoration.

It’s a good blade. Reminds him of a claw. He polished up an old sheath of his he got as a present to use alongside it. He hasn’t been nervous around Nathan for a long time, but when he gives him the knife, his hands are shaking.

And maybe he knows why, now, even though he didn’t before. They’re friends now— _really_ friends, not the strange one-sided friendship Gabriel saw while trying to talk to him the first few days in the apartment. It’s only now he realises why he was so inclined to speak to him in the first place.

He’s—interested, for lack of a better word. Fascinated. Captivated. Fucking _attracted_ , sue him.

He’d bought the knife and bickered with the salesmen for a few minutes, to the point where Rose had to come in and calm them down in a way only she knew how to. “What’s gotten into you?” She asked, looking at the knife. “I mean, it’s nice. But you have so many.”

“It’s not for me,” he said, and regretted it the moment he said it. Rose’s eyebrows flitted to her hairline, and she put her hands on her hips.

“I know it can’t be for me,” she said, “so who’s the lucky man? Do I have to remind him what’s in store if he hurts you?”

And because it’s Rose, he’d told her. Let it slip in the most dramatic way possible. “You’d have to get payback as we speak,” he said, and watched her eyebrows scrunch as she tried to remember who he’s fought with and mentioned in the past few weeks. “But the fight we had is water under the bridge. It reminded me of him. I think he’ll like it.”

“He, he, he,” she’d said, and in one snap realization, he’d seen her hand go to her mouth. She’d hounded him the entire way home about when he fell in love with Nathan.

But he _hasn’t_ , because he’s the son of Marcus and Gabriel doesn’t fall that easily, especially for rude, stubborn boys who pretend they don’t cry and pretend they don’t feel and despise croissants (who despises croissants?) and can make one conversation sound like several, and never speak before they think but always act before they think and—maybe he has. Maybe he has fallen in love, but there’s very little people he can admit that to.

Especially because, well, Nathan is waiting for a girl. A White Witch. Someone he says he shouldn’t be in love with, because it’s a bad idea.

Gabriel can empathise with this train of thought.

He gives Nathan the knife after a lot of thought, and that’s probably what makes him so anxious.

“It’s beautiful,” Nathan says, but he’s not looking at the knife. “Thanks, mate. It’s incredible. But why—”

“I saw it and thought of you, I guess,” he says, and Nathan smiles at him before running his fingertips along the smooth sides of the knife. “It’s—do you think you’ll use it?”

“You don’t know how much I’ve been needing a good blade,” he says, but then narrows his eyes at him. “But of course you know. You’re you. Is that why you got it?”

 _No_. “Yeah,” Gabriel says.

Nathan smiles at him again and starts fastening the sheath to his belt. “You’ll have to keep me from sleeping with it on,” he says.

 _I won’t. I like seeing something I bought for you on you_. “I will,” he says.

 

* * *

 

The girl destroys everything with her arrival.

Her name is Annalise. On the night she comes, Nathan goes by her side and stays there for most of the day, leaving Gabriel to hike and swim and do whatever the fuck in a desperate attempt to distract himself from whatever festivities they’ve probably gotten himself into.

He’s been told the nature of Mercury and Nathan’s deal, but he still doesn’t have a second to tell Nathan not to go through with it because he’s so preoccupied with his perfect little White Witch. He’s at Mercury’s mercy because of the same deal, and he regrets it. Every day. Rose probably does, too, although she’d rather die than admit it.

Gabriel occupies himself as to not think about what Annalise ruined. Not that he has much of a choice _not_ to occupy himself, of course, because he and Rose are staking out Clay’s house for the Fairborn.

As he watches Rose flit about, he feels something cool on his throat, like a block of ice or a breeze. Or Mercury’s kiss. Only with its arrival does he feel the puff of air on his neck, the faint pant from a person who’s obviously been running. It’s definitely not Mercury. She wouldn’t dirty her hands like this, anyway. “Not good enough,” they hiss.

“Nathan?” He whispers. It’s not the first time Nathan has pushed a blade against his throat, but it’s certainly the first _literal_ time he has. “What are you doing here?”

And he tells him. He tells him everything. They set off to find Rose, whisper-yelling corrections to their original plan in a strange haze.

“Is your girl okay?” Gabriel asks.

(Not because he cares much for Annalise.)

“She will be,” Nathan says in a tight voice, but Gabriel barely thinks about that when Nathan looks at him, eyes searching his face for an answer he doesn’t ask. They can pull this off. They _have_ to pull this off.

As he and Rose round the front of the house, he presses his mouth to her ear and whispers something, so quietly it must sound wet in her ear. “What did you tell Nathan? He was looking at me really strangely.”

Rose sighs, as if everything has to be explained to him. “I told him what he needed to know,” she whispers back. “I’m sure you’ll thank me someday. Now _hush_.”

What is there to tell him? He hopes Rose had told him as little as possible, because that’s her style and she likes keeping people on their toes. Nathan knowing he loves him is unfathomable. It would be like some inanimate, untouchable thing gaining consciousness—like the moon, the stars. It’s been one of those secrets that’s only been nudged at by his subconscious mind for such a long time, it’s unfamiliar to Gabriel for it to be so glaringly obvious to him like it has been these past few days.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

He _can’t_ think about it. They have to get the Fairborn, and he has to help Nathan.

 

* * *

 

 

Gabriel’s thoughts scramble as if the bullet through Nathan had gone through his mind. Rose is dead, Nathan is dying—he’s not dying but he’s _dying_ —and Gabriel will die too, if he dies. There’s no way out. There’s no way out except for the doorway at the end of the tunnel.

“I’ll be careful,” he tells Nathan, in one giant, long breath.

“You don’t know how to be careful,” Nathan says. He’s trying to keep his words light-hearted, but Gabriel knows too much of him now—this is what he’d feared, before. Maybe he doesn’t fear Nathan like he should, but there’s other parts of him that are so immensely terrifying. There’s parts of him that laugh and smile and love and think—and he’s seen far too much of them. He could lie to himself before, distance himself from all of Nathan’s humanity. But he can’t now. In the midst of _this_.

Just a few slit throats are enough to send a message.

He kisses Nathan on the cheek. “ _Je mourrais pour toi, mon cher_ ,” he says. “ _Je t’aime_.”

Nathan hugs him a final time, and then he’s jumping over the fence, filled with the same adrenaline he feels with every encounter with a Hunter. This time, it’s doubled, tripled—he can feel it everywhere but his heart.

There’s four days until Nathan’s Giving. As far as Gabriel is concerned, that’s four days he’s going to have to survive, whether he likes it or not.


End file.
